Джеймс Паттерсон: 14th Deadly Sin:

She called out over the loud conversation that was bouncing off the tile and steel surfaces: “Lindsay, over here.”

I headed toward my pals, and Claire stood up for my hug. She looked gorgeous, wearing black pants, a V-neck sweater, and a diamond pendant shaped like a butterfly around her neck. Claire is usually trying to lose a few pounds, but she always looks perfect to me.

I said, “Love you, Butterfly. Happy birthday, girlfriend.”

She laughed. “Love you, too, Linds.”

She hugged me back, and I swung into a chair across from her and next to Yuki. Small-boned Yuki was impeccably dressed in a blue suit, her sleek hair falling to her creamy silk collar. A string of pale angel skin coral beads at her throat. When I’d last seen Yuki a week ago, she’d looked a little happier than she did now.

“You OK?” I asked.

“I’m good,” she said.

We embraced, and I had just hung my jacket over the back of my chair when Cindy sailed up to the table, glowing like a rose at sunrise.

There was more hugging and kissing all around, Cindy adding a gift to the growing pile of sparkly paper and ribbons in the center of the table. We high-fived each other and I signaled to the waiter.

I was hungry for the specialty of the house: a hamburger made with Niman Ranch beef, topped with caramelized onions, bacon, cheese, and horseradish aioli, nestled between halves of a hot, buttered bun. With fries. And even more than that upcoming delight, I was very glad to be with my best friends.

It was Cindy who had named our little group the Women’s Murder Club. It was kind of a joke, and at the same time entirely for real, because the four of us certainly surrounded the subject of murder: me in Homicide; Claire, San Francisco’s medical examiner; Yuki, a rising star in the DA’s Office; and Cindy Thomas, a top-tier crime reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle .

Cindy was a new author, too. Her nonfiction book, Fish’s Girl: A True Story of Love and Serial Murder , was grounded in a case Conklin and I had worked and two killers we had both known very well. Cindy had followed up the case and helped bring one of those killers down.

Her book was coming out at the end of the week. I was pretty sure that was why she was glowing.

After we’d ordered drinks, Claire piped up. “Yuki’s quitting her job.”

Cindy and I both said, “No way!” at the same time.

“I’m thinking about it,” Yuki said, “just thinking about it. It’s, like, an idea, you know? Geesh, you guys.”

Cindy jumped in with what I was imagining.

“Oh. My. God. I know what’s going on with you. You’re pregnant. ”

Yuki was married to my boss, the tough but fair Lieutenant Jackson Brady—but they’d only been married for four months. I didn’t have a chance to get my mind around the idea of Yuki and Brady having a child, because Yuki was answering Cindy in her typical rapid-fire style.

“No, no, no , I’m not pregnant, but if you don’t mind, all of you, we have to order lunch now , because I absolutely have to be in a deposition in an hour.”

And that was when my phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID while everyone stared bullets at me. We had one rule for our no-holds-barred get-togethers.

No phone calls.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got to take this.”

And I did.

CHAPTER 6

I LEFT THE girls and found a niche where I could take the call in private.

“What’s wrong?” I said to Lieutenant Brady.

“A dead body at Twenty-Fourth and Balmy Alley,” he said. “I need you and Conklin to do a preliminary workup. Lock down the scene and sit tight until replacements arrive. Jacobi wants you and Conklin on the check-cashing heist, nothing else.”

I rejoined my friends.

I said, “Sorry, guys. That was the boss. I’ve got to go.”

Yuki tossed her napkin a few inches into the air in exasperation.

Cindy said, “What can you tell me?”

You can take the reporter out of the Chronicle , but you can’t take the reporter out of Cindy.

“Nothing,” I said. “I can’t tell you even one little thing.”

“How many times do I have to prove I’m trustworthy?” said Cindy. “Plus, you owe me.”

Actually, Cindy was right. On both counts. I trusted her. And a few months ago, she’d saved my life.

“I still can’t tell you anything. Not a word.”

I grabbed for my jacket and had just about secured it when Claire said, “I cannot believe this is happening again .”

The expression on her face stopped me. She was pissed. Highly.

“ What’s happening again?” I asked her.

“This is almost exactly what happened last year on my birthday,” said Claire. “And the year before that. ”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m damned sure. Although as I recall, last year we actually ate most of our lunch before you bolted from the table. Check your memory, Lindsay. When was the last time you saw me blow out the candles?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t get out of this. I’ll make it up to you, Claire. To everyone. Including myself. That’s an iron-clad promise.”

I apologized some more, blew kisses, and fled the restaurant. I called Rich Conklin from the street, and while I walked to my car, I said, “I’m ten minutes away.”

“Same here.”

The engine started right up. I peeled out and pointed the Explorer toward a busy intersection in the Mission.

CHAPTER 7

BALMY ALLEY AND Twenty-Fourth looked like a freeway pileup.

I counted three hastily parked cruisers, and another one was coming in behind me. Both streets were cordoned off, causing traffic to back up in the one open lane on Twenty-Fourth. Pedestrians had gathered three deep at the barrier tape with cell phones in hand, evidently having nothing better to do than gawp at a bleeding corpse in the crosswalk.

I parked on the sidewalk, got my point-and-shoot Nikon out of the console, and found Conklin, who was talking to a young cop. He introduced me to Officer Martin Einhorn, a rookie who’d been writing up a parking ticket when the incident occurred.

Einhorn’s black eyes flashed back and forth between Conklin and me as he walked us through the scene. He was sweating through his uniform and his speech was high-pitched and staccato. Very likely he’d never seen a body before, and now he’d been this close to an actual murder as it happened.

He said, “I was putting a ticket on that red Mazda over there. The victim was crossing the street. There were a lot of people crossing at the same time, both ways. Tourists mostly,” he said, pointing his chin in the general direction of the sightseer magnet: vividly colored murals protesting human rights abuses over the last fifty years.

“I didn’t see the attack,” said the rookie. “I heard the screaming, and when everyone scattered, I saw … her.” He took a moment to get himself together before continuing.

“I called it in and the EMTs got here like a minute later. They said the victim was dead and I told them to leave her body in place. That this is a crime scene.”

“Exactly right,” I said.

Einhorn nodded, then said a squad car had arrived after a few minutes and the officers had strung tape. “We got as many names as we could, but people were trying to get out of here and we didn’t have enough manpower to detain them. Those two witnesses hung in. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Gosselin, right over there. Mrs. Gosselin saw the attack.”

While Conklin approached the couple standing outside a smoke shop, I took a wide-angle view of the crime scene and got a fix on where the victim lay in relation to cars, buildings, and people. Then I ducked under the tape and identified myself to the officers who were protecting the body and the scene.